signs of hope after days of violence there appears to be enough for itself and the fighting between israel and gaza we'll take a look at efforts to broker a cease fire and how u.s. policy is playing a role in ending the conflict. and those answers are expanding here in the u.s. they've been popping up on subway stations for weeks and now they're being placed on buses around the country we ask are these ads free speech or hate speech. and reaching out to family and friends but at what costs the f.c.c. is taking a hard look at how much prisoners are being charged to use telephones are they

being ripped off because they're locked up or if he looks into the issue in just a moment. it's tuesday november twentieth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . we begin this hour with the deadly crisis in the middle east talks of a cease fire today after one of the bloodiest days of the conflict in gaza over one hundred people are reported dead in gaza three people in israel have been killed israel defense forces continued airstrikes overnight while dozens of rockets were reportedly fired from gaza into israel today u.n. secretary ban ki moon called for a cease fire in gaza saying a ground operation there must be avoided. while russia is a maybe a. military targets inside gaza. and enjoys to be. a

civilian infrastructure. is only acceptable under any circumstances the excessive use of force is can and must be rejected. meanwhile the u.s. is sending warships near israel on border two thousand five hundred marines u.s. officials say they will be on standby in case americans need to be evacuated from israel now the officials say the ships are not meant to serve any combat role but the decision to send the ships signals a growing concern over just where the conflict is had it for more i spoke with artsy international correspondent paula slayer i first asked her if talk about the cease fire has been any comfort for the people there. well if that means comfort because it is a sign on the horizon that what we've worked at for the past seven days is coming

to an end but it certainly doesn't mean that it's a long term solution we are hearing conflicting reports on the one hand hamas is betting that a cease fire has been agreed to and goes into effect from midnight local time tuesday but we're not hearing the same kind of statements being made by the israeli government they are calling for some kind of twenty four hour. delay period where they are calling for some kind of twenty four hour period by which the situation can be a fixed and they can determine whether or not a mess is in fact serious about implementing this kind of truce the egyptian president mohamed morsi has said that he does expect the israelis to stop their operation by the end of tuesday so the signs of there the words are being said a cease fire is about to be implemented if indeed it has not already been and we just haven't been notified about it but you need to remember that we're talking about sworn enemies i mean a mass has on its charter the call for the destruction of the jewish state is welcomed sort of her massive terrorist organization and none of that changes despite the fact that a ceasefire is in

a fix meanwhile secretary of state hillary clinton is on route to the middle east is there a feeling that this visit will really help resolve the conflict. if not necessarily that people here feel that the u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton's visit will help with all the conflict but certainly she will be the final impetus for this resolution for a cease fire taking place she will be meeting with the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu in jerusalem she'll then meet with the palestinian president mahmoud abbas in ramallah she will not be meeting with hamas because the u.s. does also regard her mouth as a terrorist organization and this has evoked a whole lot of course of criticism particularly in the social media where i've been monitoring with people saying well how really can the u.s. be involved in this conflict if they refuse to a recognize and b. meet with one of the parties but so see we might be what this. from the israeli side are holding back in terms of saying yes we've agreed to the ceasefire until

hillary clinton is in fact in the region she might actually be the glue that brings this all together but again just to make the point that the u.s. is by no means with god as a completely neutral broker the sentiment in the region so see is that the u.s. is backing israel president obama from the start said that he did understand the israeli position and that it was justified in terms of needing to defend its borders which did not obviously go down well with hamas so you have the you with or you've been perceived and perhaps rightly so too has israel on its side well certainly everybody that's been experienced experiencing violence the past few days and is hoping for peace and is also seeking this peaceful resolution secretary general ban ki moon is discouraging a ground war in gaza meanwhile thousands of u.s. marines are heading to the region paula what kind of message is that sending. well the message is and no one is neutral when it comes to any kind of involvement particularly in the middle east i mean you have the egyptians who are the mediator

but certainly they have a very delicate line to to balance and to solve on the one hand representing the growing cause of the egyptian people which is essentially a sympathy in a brotherhood with hamas and on the other hand not annoying the united states which supplies so much funding to cairo on an annual basis the fact that you have for example the united states involved in this again not a neutral broke a very much seen as supporting israel always putting israel's interests first you have the united nations you mentioned bank you moon he has been holding talks in cairo and he is now here in israel as well the united states to the united states is not necessarily viewed positively by either the israelis or palestinians the israelis or voice felt that the u.n. takes the palestinian side and the palestinians for their side feel that the u.n. could do more so depending on who you're talking about these are the the player in the international community it comes with all the baggage and it's perceived in that context the fact that not you have these marines coming to the region again

only for them in trenches the perception particularly amongst our of the palestinians that the u.s. is involved for self interests that the u.s. friendship with as well is partly a self-interest friendship and so what you're international brokers are doing is at the end of the day motivated by self-interest ok and there are certainly times have changed you have mentioned egypt and right now there is this new egyptian leadership with a closer relationship to hamas than under president hosni mubarak how is that affecting egypt's role as a mediator a role egypt has played in the past. well there's been a lot of discussion about this here in the region i mean you need to realize that the egyptian president mohamed morsi was unable to say the word is row up until a few days ago and it actually slipped off his tongue whether it was a mistake or whether it was a test of acknowledgement of israel is something that has stood the israeli public opinion and you can see a lot of that in the commentary pages of various newspapers egypt has come to the

fore it is certainly playing a central role and this has always been the intention of the egyptian leadership was to put themselves back on the map we would have seen a very different type of mediation happening if it was the former egyptian president hosni mubarak so me it's well known that he was on the side of israel he did not carry the same kind of support and he would have gone that extra mile with her months to try and broker some kind of ceasefire or perhaps try and implement what we how witnessing not all from the government but having said that morsi comes from the muslim brotherhood which is and this is none of the party and he is under criticism for in fact having any kind of interaction with the israelis for twenty to pacify the militants in gaza he is increasingly interesting enough being seen as almost a more moderate voice than he was before this conflict began so it's a very interesting development just just watching how the egyptian leadership and

particularly that of the muslim brotherhood has evolved as indeed it has had to since it's come to government a very delicate situation over there in the middle east paula thank you that was our t. international correspondent policy here. on update now to a story we covered yesterday on cyber security after filing a freedom of information act request seeking the public release of presidential policy directive twenty attorneys at the electronic privacy information center have been denied their requests their directive as a directive and question outlines a vague language on how to deal with cyber secure. thirty and particular cyber attacks epic argue that the directive would expand the reach of the national security agency and could possibly create the opportunity for military action in response to a cyber attack so what does this mean for your online privacy r.c. producer adriano the cerro takes a look at why everyone should be keeping tabs on the cyber security debates. and he

has been covering the cyber security beat for a year as more of our lives become wrapped up in the digital sphere while some of the language in new legislation and executive directives is jargony behind the legally this is a structure that can give and take away privacy for the sake of security here's what's at stake as the general petraeus scandal made resoundingly clear our personal e-mail correspondence even the ones we don't send are being saved and can be accessed by the government and the private companies they contract however email is not the only form of communication that's being tapped under current laws phone calls can already be listened to however electronic communications via popular programs like skype for instance have backdoor access to lots of information containing you guessed it chats and other personal communications in other words you might have to think twice about sending that chat now on to the field of medicine where information that used to be private may not be anymore the

establishment of al tronic medical records is a major part of the healthcare reform and the obama administration set aside nineteen billion dollars in stimulus money for electronic records so doctors know patients come for comprehensive medical history however those physicians notes can be accessed by doctors and other health care providers sometimes thousands of which share the same system it also opens up these private records to vulnerability from hackers. and banks they're replacing tellers with automated machines and online banking apps which certainly make things more convenient for consumers it also however it leaves your banking information passwords and account numbers easily open to scanning the a smartphone and bank servers identifying the device used to access the information able to glean other facts about the user like where they are located that a change to privacy law banks can sell this information as a secondary revenue stream now into voting one of the many issues during this past

election cycle was the idea of voter fraud slash manipulation voting machines have long been called hackable on election day we saw some regularity stemming from votes being allegedly altered add to that the fact that many observers claim the current crop of technology is in need of serious oversight and should make many wonder that the policy possibility of throwing an election might not be too far from reality mass transit the information technology infrastructure that enables transportation systems is comprised of information and transit networks that control navigation traffic signalling systems traction power systems and traveler information and fare collection systems all of which are vulnerable to affordable cyber attack plus newly manufactured automobiles are made with computers in them which web advocates have fun are easily hacked and parts of our critical infrastructure from electric grids to water pumps and filtration systems nuclear

plants and cellular all depend on computers to function general keith b. alexander the top american military off the fischel regarding cyber attacks said computer attacks on american infrastructure increased seventeen fold between two thousand and nine and twenty eleven of course the united states has been on the other side of this one to helping to engineer computer viruses flame and steps known to target iranian organizations and infrastructure. and just as we communicate on an individual basis with help from email governments and corporations even secure e-mail systems to stay in contact but with techniques like spearfishing these email servers can be breached and look no further than bradley manning at the state department for an example of a whistleblower opening up a slew of communications to the public at this point physical trading places like the new york stock exchange are more symbolic than necessary to global finance instead of high frequency trading use of computer algorithms and technological

tools instead of runners on an exchange for of course tying the global finance system to computers means that it's just another part of our world affected by cyber security and where to turn to for information about the world more and more people go to the world wide web even if you don't news organizations use web content management systems to plug in and share their stories plus governments large and small connect with constituents the official web sites which can be easily taken down in distributed denial of service attacks. and last but not least the surveillance state big data is here to stay and the ability to store and compress huge amounts of information is getting easier databases are already finding patterns giving individuals a digital footprint between security cameras more and more places and cell phone location information there won't be many blanks to fill it and the expectation of privacy we have or at least our parents had will be lost in washington i'm adriano said o r t. well still ahead here on r t the phone is the only way to

communicate for those locked up behind bars but could some prisons and phone companies be ripping off those jail the story when we come back.

another controversial ad campaign is hitting u.s. cities they caused outrage in new york city and washington d.c. but now they've been slapped on buses in chicago and denver here are the ads that are being called racist and divisive the. first one reads nine thousand two hundred and seven deadly islamic attacks since nine eleven and counting it's not islam a phobia it's a llama realisable there's also another ad like the one we saw here in d.c. in new york is sad and any war between the civilized man of the savage support the civilized man supports israel defeat jihad now the ads are sponsored by pamela geller is american freedom defense initiative so is this campaign ad dividing this

ad campaign excuse me dividing communities or is a perfectly fair free speech to discuss this and more it was joined by ayman al sayyid co-founder of existence is resistance i began by asking his thoughts on the ads calling their campaign islam a real islam. i think that's for trying to justify does research again it is considered a misnomer for big extremely racist divisive trying to instigate hatred of muslim americans and muslims around the world and it's really disturbing that they're back up again you know she may have a right to free speech and the put them up but we have to acknowledge that it's hate speech now how do you think that the ads target extremists because that's what pamela gallagher has sad. interviews in the past or do you think they target muslims as a whole i think they're targeting muslims as a whole. anybody you may even look like they're from the middle east who aren't

because racists. start hitting on a group of people they're going to target you based on your how you look just like they do with the sikh community that was shot by this racist pages when the shot of the sikh temple so i don't believe that these are targeting extremists at all i believe they're targeting muslim americans are americans palestinians or lebanese south asians pakistanis people of different backgrounds who practice islam so. that there are reports of an islamic ad campaign now with that in the works isn't titled my jihad. and you know it says these ads one of them there said defeat jihad . what does that mean to you i know the literal translation means struggle what does that mean. to me personally and to many people i know the jihad means working hard waking up to your family in your bills going to school going to work being a good neighbor treating people respect being loving and that's what that's what

jihad means to me you know they're force for a couple of reasons the first reason is to try to say that you must if you don't support israel you are savage but as we see what's going on now in gaza it's what it's what israel is doing a savagery against people in gaza the palestinians not. being against israel if you're against israeli policies you should be because they are killing people as we speak right now in this interview people are dying in gaza there's nothing civilized about bombing homes and hospitals and schools and occupying the whole people she's trying to tell us that it's civilized to support apartheid against the palestinians that's what these ads are basically about to justify is really colonialism against the palestinian people and we want to say that that's wrong that that savagery what's going on against palestinians and i know that on the flip side what they are going to say that it's also savagery to be hurling rockets into israel it's really an comparable you know i mean just looking at the death toll the palestinians are very over a hundred fifty now been killed

a large amount of children civilians are majority the victims israel has barely anybody has barely been killed by these rockets it's really kind of a joke to try to compare the both israel is the one committing the savage crimes against the palestinians even former president jimmy carter said israel doesn't want peace they just want to continue continual war a lot of rain rockets have been intercepted so i think it's fair to say that the technology and as a reality far more advanced. definitely the technology is far more advanced and israel is the one instigated all of this in the first place not the palestinians not the rockets from hamas israel has been continuing to build settlements continuing to occupy palestinian land continuing to kill people every day when they hear it on the media but every day somebody is killed shot jailed young kids in jail so you know the media tries to portray it as it all started with hamas rockets that's totally false it did not start with that it started with israel being the aggressor continuing its policy of apartheid in colonialism against the palestinian

people and that has to end for there to be any real settlement an end to the violence israel has to be put in its place and told by the un and the united states to stop the occupation stop killing people stop firing missiles because nothing civilized about that at all. and that was a man al sayyid co-founder of exit existence is resistance. well for someone behind bars phone calls home are virtually the only way to contact the outside world but those calls to family and friends are costing a pretty penny in state prisons this graph puts it into perspective a basic plan from cricket is four cents per minute for long distance or unlimited phone calls and texting will cost thirty five dollars a month under that plan the federal prison system a little bit more cost twenty three cents per minute but here's where it gets outrageous a call in georgia state prison via a private company global telling cost a dollar and thirteen cents a minute so that's about seventeen bucks for

a fifteen minute phone call and while it's the families that incur the cost the phone companies in the state prison systems are reaping the profit even the federal prison system which charges much less still makes money off the calls now the federal communications commission is taking notice of the exorbitant fees the f.c.c. announced it would seek public comment on prison phone rates so why are the rates so high and can the f.c.c. change anything earlier i was joined by drew koku crouse ski a research associate at the prison policy initiative he began by explaining why federal prisons cost so much less than state prisons. the federal prison system operates in own phone system unlike state systems which contract with just a handful of phone companies the largest of which is global telling which controls about fifty five percent of the state prison market in the united states and how just how lucrative would you say that this prison telephone and history as. well

just to put it into perspective a little bit will tell it was purchased by a private equity firm your about a year and a half ago for a billion dollars so it's quite a money making industry it's wow and you can you explain how states are making money off of this. you know what happens in the prison phone contracts are the state prison systems so miss requests for bids from the prison telephone company and global tell link or secures technologies which is the other the company will submit a contract and then that contract will be a requirement what is the commission payment and that's just a fancy word for a kickback and what it does is it requires the phone company to pay a percentage of all the revenue that they bring in to the state prison system and the average kickback across the nation is about forty percent wow so we see that there is an incentive there to be charging the higher rate so it looks like state

prison systems have no incentive to offer the lowest rate at all because actually the exact opposite of what you would expect in sort of an ordinary well functioning market where you know the state will select the lowest that are here the state has the exact opposite incentive which is to select the company that promises to pay the high commission which they then pass off to the consumers which are the families of incarcerated people for the most part right and meanwhile those that are incarcerated it's either the prisoners or the family that is bearing the burden of the costs they have no choice but to fabian pay these happy fees is that correct absolutely and almost all the contracts around the country are exclusive contracts so it's not like you get to choose between global telling or secures technology you just have to pay the rate for the company that has the contract for the prison that you're incarcerated in and by and large prisoners and you don't make very little

money you know fifteen twenty cents an hour and so the families and footing the bill for most of these calls are right in kind of thinking of the long term or the greater effects of this how does family contact help prisoners and terms of the recidivism rates and you know having that contact with family members of course i think it's millions of children do have at least one parent that is in jail so what are the greater implications of this. as you point out there's a proximately two point seven million children in the united states who have a parent was incarcerated and the overwhelming social science research over the past few decades has concluded that the only contact during that period of incarceration lowers recidivism rates and so and this is been accepted by congress that's been cited by the united states congress in federal legislation and cited by state legislatures and the handful of states that have reformed their

prison systems and it's even been cited by the american correctional association which is the the professional association that a credit is in jail and they are a rather different way so it doesn't look like it's doing anybody very good to be charging these have these have their rates go up what can the f.c.c. do about this so the f.c.c. as the federal regulatory body only has jurisdiction over interstate long distance rates which tend to be the highest rate in the united states and what the f.c.c. is considering right now is proposing a regulation to put a maximum price cap on the amount that the prison telephone company can charge on those interstate long distance rates ok i kind of want to take a look at the other side of that for those that might be advocates of charging these high rates you know those that think that this is just fine with say

prisoners have been convicted of a crime and serving time means you get certain rights taken away and if that means the state makes more money off the prisoner so be it what's your reaction to that. well first of all it's mostly the families of prisoners that foot the bill so it's actually the people who you know really haven't done anything wrong at all that or end up being with these high prices which are sort of a regressive tax actually if you think about it. so that's one thing that i would say the other thing i would say is that approximately sixty percent of the people in jails around the country are unconvicted so they haven't they haven't been to trial they have been convicted of anything and they're still being forced to pay these high rates so you know i would respond to people by saying that it's mostly the families of people in prison that pay their rates and their knees and there's even a good portion of people in jails that have nothing convicted of an interest and want to ask i don't know if this is

a way to get around over what about collect calls on people with family members and presents a generally receive collect calls is that a different system is that a way to circumvent these higher rates know the high rates apply to both the collect call and the prepaid calls most calls made from prisons in jail or collect and the rates are the highest for the collect call them the other way that prisoners pay for calls is through prepaid systems which they can purchase a phone card through the commissary account at the prison or the jail of course the fact that prisoners don't make any money while they're working in prison or jail means that most of that money that gets loaded on to their commissary account comes from their friends and loved ones on the outside very interesting appreciate you coming on the show and weighing in on this that was a jerk across care research associate for the prison policy and i should have. thank you. a story now that could make your stomach turn no there is been

a lot of debate over what dangers genetically modified foods could cause to your health but now it appears g m o's have created a new beast vegetables like corn were genetically modified in the first place to withstand pesticides but now so-called super worms have been identified that can withstand g.m.o. called army worms because of their infestation looks like a military attack that's what some say these creatures had no problem eating the dupont dow corning purposely designed to poison the this isn't the first worm that develop resistance to g.m.o. foods that prize goes to midwestern worms who grew immune to monsanto corner earlier this fall so of g.m.o. foods make worms more resistant to pesticides instead of eradicating them will it cost more for farmers to use even more chemicals to protect their crops we'll keep you posted.